Message from Councilman Courage

Happy August to the Right at HOME readers! I hope the end of your summer is treating you well. It’s been a busy summer here at City Hall so I’d like to take the time to better explain some of what I have personally proposed.

Transparency in our political process was one of the chief issues in my campaign. I have already filed two Council Consideration Requests which aim to give the citizens of San Antonio a much clearer view of our municipal campaigns.

The first CCR I filed would enhance our Municipal Campaign Finance Code to require that campaigns report the employer and occupation of anybody who’s given more than $100 for that election cycle. The purpose is to provide full disclosure of where political campaign contributions are really coming from. A person’s name and an amount may not seem egregious, but if you discover that 10 or 20 other people who work for the same company have given between $100 and $500 each to a candidate, it would be extremely important to recognize.

The second CCR my office filed would seek to further verify the residency status of candidates who wish to serve on City Council. We are seeking to give the City Clerk’s office the authority to look into recent utility bills as a means of verifying the information on a candidate’s application. As some of you Stone Oak folks might recall, we had a candidate in the last election that claimed residency in your area but actually lived in Austin. During the campaign many constituents called our office to ask if there was anything that could be done to avoid situations like this in the future.

Both of these CCRs received the requisite support from my Council colleagues to be sent to the Governance Committee. While we don’t have the agenda of next month’s meeting, we expect these items to be heard at the September 20th Governance Committee meeting. We eventually expect to bring these proposals to City Council for adoption and implementation.

A door was opened to me this June, and as such our office will always have an open-door policy. I look forward to bringing all of my neighbors closer to my efforts. Please visit our field office at 16500 San Pedro, Suite 290 | 78232, give us a call at 210.207.0955, or email us at District9@sanantonio.gov.